[tigerpaw75]

Just an update, I called the hospital (Texas Health Presby- Plano) today and found out we were misquoted by the hospital - the cost of the Prodisc will be about $12,600, which when you add in TBI's charges of $8000, nets out of about $20,600 ..BC/BS Alabama will be paying for the fusion and all the peripherals. 20K out of pocket was more what we were expecting. Apparently we were erroneously quoted a full, non-discounted price for the Prodisc. Just frustrating it took 6 weeks to get a solid number. We will try to get reimbursement later, but I won't be holding my breath...going to try to max out our Flex Spending Accounts for the rest of the year to help a little...

My wife also got a call from Cheryl at TBI today, who apologized profusely about the runaround that she had gotten. Apparently there are some communication issues between the hospital and TBI, that they are going to work on to fix.

So it looks like we will be going to Dallas in a couple weeks for a L5-S1 ALIF fusion and a Prodisc L ADR at L4-L5...with Dr. Blumenthal.

Any advice on what to do between then and now, questions to ask? She still has to have a few diagnostic tests and go through the psyche test prior to surgery...

No offense to the Indian surgeon we were considering, but I'm glad we don't have to make a 20+ hour flight to Bangalore. But I was ready to go if TBI was going to be $30K+...and I do think folks should check out Dr. Rajakumar at Wockhardt (soon to be Fortis) Hospital in Bangalore. I think it is a world class facility and by all accounts I could find does good work in this area.

Tom